This invention has particular application to a in-line roller skate boot. A conventional brake structure for an in-line roller-skate boot is shown in FIG. 5. The brake structure includes a sheathing 50, a brake lever 60, a link block 70 and a skate brake 80. The sheathing 50 is attached to a rear portion of the skate boot. The sheathing 50 has a vertical recess 51 defined in a bottom thereof. The recess 51 is partly by two opposite sides, in each of which an upper hole 52 and a lower hole 53 transversely extend. The brake lever 60 is substantially wedge-shaped and has two transverse holes (not numbered and only one can be seen) defined through a top portion thereof. A bottom portion of the brake lever 60 is connected with the link block 70 through a screw. Each of the transverse holes defined through the top portion of the brake lever 60 can align with either the lower hole 53 or the upper hole 52 when the top portion of the brake lever 60 is received in the recess 51 so that the brake lever 60 can have four securing positions relative to the sheathing 50. A screw 54 is used to extend through either the upper hole 52 or the lower hole 53 (in the shown case, it extends through the hole 53) and either of the two transverse holes in the top portion of the brake lever 60 (in the shown case it extends the upper one) to engage with a nut, thereby securing the brake lever 60 to the sheathing 50. The link block 70 defines a vertical groove 71 in which the bottom portion of the brake lever 60 is pivotally secured. The skate brake 80 is disposed below the link block 70.
However, there are several disadvantages of this design. Firstly, the brake lever 60 can have only four securing positions relative to the sheathing 50, which means that fine adjustment of the skate brake 80 is limited as the skate brake 80 gradually wears away and, thus, the safety of the user is impaired. Secondly, the retention of the brake lever 60 is provided by the screw and the nut, which are threadedly attached to each other, but may loosen through vibration of the skate boot. Additionally, when a user wants to adjust the level of the skate brake 80, a tool must be used to loosen the screw 54 and its engaging nut, which is inconvenient.
The present invention provides an improved brake structure to mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problems.